Climbing Mountains

If you're following the Read Scripture plan, we're leaving the action of the story for a while and entering into details of the law that God was giving to the people.

But we're still reading a Psalm a day and occasionally these two readings will through up an interesting commentary on each other.

In Exodus 24 God instructs Moses to come up onto the mountain - but the people must keep their distance. Moses and the elders of Israel went onto the mountain and saw God and lived to tell the tale (24:9-11). Then Moses went further, alone, and spent 40 days within the cloud, which looked to those on the outside like a 'consuming fire'.

Moses entered into the presence of God and spoke with him. The elders saw God at a distance. The people were kept much further away.

Today's Psalm asks the question,

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, who do not put their trust in an idol or swear by what is false. (Psalm 24:3-4).

In this verse, David is referring to the temple and the Holy Place, the place where God chose to make his presence known and meet with his people. As we will discover as we continue to read through Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers there were very strict instructions on who could come into the presence of God and how they were to come - if they wanted to live to tell the tale.

Last Sunday at CBC we looked at the Beatitudes and in Matthew 5:8 we read that it is the pure in heart who will see God.

But do any of us have a pure heart and clean hands? 

The good news is that through Jesus' sacrifice God gives us a pure heart and clean hands and therefore we are able to come into God's presence. And in Hebrews 10:19-22 we are encouraged to take advantage of this incredible truth and draw near to God - not to keep at a distance at the bottom of the mountain as others go into the presence of God, but to actually meet with God ourselves.

Being Disciples

Seeking to be an authentic community of disciples, becoming more like Jesus - walking in step with God, alongside each other and seeing lives transformed

This week we're going to look at what it means to be a disciple as we continue our weekly series of Friday posts exploring and unpacking our Vision here at CBC. If you miss any of these Friday posts you can easily access individual posts by clicking on relevant word above - or you can use the 'Vision' label at the bottom of this page to view the whole series.

Jesus' final words to his disciples in Matthew's gospel were,

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20).

There is an expectation here that part of what it means to be a disciple is that you go and make new disciples.

Bands of disciples in the first century would not have been an uncommon sight. Certainly Jesus was not alone in having disciples - we read that John the Baptist had his disciples and the Pharisees had theirs.

A disciple was a pupil, a learner and a follower. Within a first century context a disciple would have followed their teacher - listening to them teach, listening to the way they answer questions, watching them in action, with the intention of becoming like their teacher. A disciple would learn how to imitate their teacher. 

As we read the gospels we see that being a disciple of Jesus involved personal and exclusive allegiance to Jesus. It meant putting the claims of Jesus first - whatever the cost.

So what do we mean in our vision statement by the term 'disciple'? We mean that we have committed to follow Jesus, to learn from him, to spend time with him, to imitate him. Our allegiance is to Jesus - we put his claims first - he has first claim on our lives. We will be those who look to introduce others to Jesus just like the first disciples did. And we will be those who make disciples, who will then make disciples ...

Jesus' instruction to disciples is to make disciples, which involves teaching and obeying. Our vision talks about seeing lives transformed - and we'll look at this in a few week's time - but part of this transformation happens as people become disciples - responding to the call of Jesus - and then learn what that means by walking close to Jesus - which, in practice, we do by walking close to others - part of what it means to be an authentic community.

The first century gospel setting was generally hot and dry and dusty. As you walked along you threw up dust in your wake which will have covered those following behind. Whether it’s an urban myth or has any basis in fact there is the reported saying amongst disciples about ‘being covered in the dust of your rabbi’s feet’ - the closer you follow your rabbi the dustier you are going to get.

Our vision is to be covered in the dust of Jesus' feet. But what does this mean in practice? I guess that if we push this analogy a bit further, and bring in some of the thoughts from being an authentic community, then we will be those who are both being covered in the dust of one or two others who are walking slightly ahead of us - and from whom we're learning what it means to follow Jesus, and dust from our feet will be covering one or two  others who are walking just behind us who are learning what it means to follow Jesus from us.

We'll be thinking more in a couple of weeks' time about this image of walking close to Jesus as we think about what it means to walk in step with God.

[Picture credit: www.LumoProject.com]

Sunday morning poetry

During a sermon at CBC there will be some people who tweet, there will be some who take notes, there will be many who will listen (some with their eyes closed), and then there will be one or two who write poetry. 

Here's the poem that Sophie Smith wrote on Sunday as we continued our series on the Kingdom of God, looking at the Upside Down Kingdom from the Beatitudes.

Thank you Sophie for letting me share it here.


You hear my mourning
You hear my prayer
And so you keep it
From becoming despair

You hold the key
To the kingdom door
Your grace and mercy
Allow me in once more

The love of God 
Is not about me
It's all about
What you choose me to be

I don't need
To feel happiness
All I need
Is your forgiveness 

I lay down all
My fears of love
And know that you
Will love me from above

As long as I 
Have you in my heart
I know the kingdom
Will be my start 

I won't fear 
That I may be missed 
Because with your grace
Everyone will be blessed. 

Sophie Smith

It's not what you know but who you know...

If you're following the Read Scripture Bible reading programme I hope you're still enjoying it. We're now into Exodus, and the story of Moses and the escape from Egypt. And maybe with the exception of the 'bridegroom of blood' incident in chapter 4, the storyline is fairly easy to follow.

Sometimes when I'm reading the Bible I find a particular word used over and over again. I noticed this yesterday (Exodus 7-9) - you may have noticed it too. The word was 'know'. When I looked back at the previous day's reading it occurred there several times too - and again today.

At the beginning of this part of the story, as Moses and Aaron come to request the release of God's people we find Pharaoh declaring "I do not know the Lord and I will not let the people go" (5:2).

But God promises that he will deliver the people and as a result God says, "I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God". (6:7).

Because Pharaoh refuses to let the people go, God is going to bring the plagues on Egypt, to demonstrate his power, and as a result the people of Egypt too will "know that I am the Lord" (7:5).

In these readings Moses tells Pharaoh that there is no one like their God, that he is God of the land, in fact the earth belongs to him (7:17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29).

For Christmas I got some iTunes vouchers and used them to buy an 'NIV Word Study Bible with GK & Strong's Numbers' to go with the Olive Tree Bible software that I use. One of the great things about this book is that you can engage with the original languages that the Bible was written in without having spent years and years learning Greek or Hebrew. You can select an English word - easily find out what that is in Hebrew - and then do a search on that Hebrew word. The value of this is that sometimes our English translations use a range of different English words to translate the same Hebrew word.

In this case, this kind of search shows that in 2:25 "So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them" the word translated 'concerned' is the same word that has been translated 'know' in the above examples. 

[At this point it is always helpful to check some alternative translations before you try and build a whole Bible study on some limited Hebrew or Greek. One of the things we were warned at college was that the only thing more dangerous than no New Testament Greek was a little New Testament Greek! This is where online tools such as Bible Gateway come in very useful.]

The ESV translates this verse - 'God saw the people of Israel - and God knew'. The ASV (American Standard Version) says - 'And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them'. The NKJV says - '...and God acknowledged them'.

The people are known by God and God wants them to know him. We too are known by God and can know God ourselves.

Here are a few verses to take those thoughts a bit further:

• Psalm 46:10
• 1 Corinthians 2:2
• 1 Corinthians 13:12
• Philippians 3:10